Woman rescued after runner sees car in Maine river

Posted
Sunday, June 30, 2013 4:55 am

CARRABASSETT VALLEY, Maine (AP) - An 82-year-old woman whose car went off a road and over an embankment and landed upside down in a river was rescued Friday after a runner spotted its taillights and swam to it.

Dave Koenig was running with his dog on a path on the other side of the Carrabassett River when he saw the car's lights, which weren't visible from Route 27, Carrabassett Valley police Officer Courtney Krause said. Koenig and his dog trudged and swam across the river, where he found Ivah Palmer inside the partially submerged car but realized he couldn't get her out by himself.

Koenig, of Coplin Plantation, ran up the riverbank and flagged down help. Two other men helped him pull Palmer out of the car. They got her up to the road, and she waited wrapped in a blanket in a heated car until police arrived, Koenig said.

"She had a lot of stuff going for her today," Koenig said.

Palmer, a former Coplin Plantation town clerk, suffered a broken leg and was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Farmington, Krause said.

Police believe she was in the river for 20 minutes. Koenig estimated he found her at 11:55 a.m. and she was out of the car by noon. Police arrived a short time later, he said.

"I was in the right place at the right time," he told the Lewiston Sun Journal (http://bit.ly/10pXe8s). "It all happened so fast."

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